September 21, 2009

NEW YORK CITY – Global partnerships are the key to resolving climate change negotiations and gaining collective commitment to capping greenhouse emissions and providing adequate adaptation funding, non-governmental organizations and small island climate change advocates told civil society, business and faith leaders in a briefing at the United Nations last week.

As a prelude to this week's United Nations Week of Climate Change Action and the G-20 meeting in Pittsburgh, the September 16 UN briefing, in which Church World Service presented, detailed a rationale for moving "from global warming to global partnership" as the key to achieving a collective commitment to capping emissions and helping the world's most vulnerable people adapt to climate change.

The briefing was co-sponsored by the State of Grenada, Chair of the Alliance of Small Island States (AOSIS), and the Committee of NGOs (CoNGO, the Conference of Non-Governmental Organizations in Consultative Relationship with the United Nations), an umbrella organization of more than 600 NGOs.

Ambassador Dessima Williams, chair of the Alliance of Small Island States, said "We cannot continue to ignore the human costs of climate change-unnecessary loss of human life, hunger, disease, poverty and lost livelihoods are all on our doorsteps. They have the potential to threaten social well-being and political stability, and in some cases the very survival of low-lying island states.

"In these negotiations we need for more ambitious reduction targets to ensure the survival of small island states and low-lying areas around the world and to boost our well-tested resilience," she said.

In the event, titled The Real Wealth of Nations: From Global Warming to Global Partnerships, humanitarian agency Church World Service's Enough for All campaign was cited as an example of successful adaptation support in action. The campaign, in part, is focusing on the role of women as both chief bearers of the burden of climate change impacts and as power points.

‘Climate change not an equal opportunity phenomenon'

CWS Director of Education and Advocacy Rajyashri Waghray emphasized the wisdom of including women in world partnering efforts. "Climate change is not an equal opportunity phenomenon. Women and children are the frontlines of coping with the impact of climate change because of their economic status and because of the particular roles they play in society.

"But bear in mind they are also on the frontlines of creating alternative strategies and solutions," she said. "Our experience in grassroots development work in different regions of the world demonstrates that women are often well positioned to manage risk because of their roles as both users and managers of environmental resources, as economic providers and as caregivers and community workers.

"When policy makers and development work have taken into account gender roles and incorporate women's voices, their efforts to help communities adapt to changing climate have met with greater effectiveness and sustainability," Waghray said.

She cited one of the main "drivers of poverty" is women's traditional lack of access to and control over food production and decision-making. "Where women have had access to and control over food production and decisions surrounding these processes, the lesser the chances of hunger and poverty."

In developing countries over 70 percent of the people depend on small or subsistence farms and holdings to primarily feed themselves and their families. In the case of small island developing countries (SIDS), the CWS advocacy director said, "The land itself is disappearing, and more of it will, entire countries and communities. The topic of climate change is the here and now of their reality."

For more information on Church World Service's Enough for All Campaign and Countdown to Copenhagen, visit http://www.churchworldservice.org.

Church World Service